Tag: GreatLakesNews

{{Burundi has ordered a security adviser at the United Nations mission in the country to leave on Thursday, escalating a row that started with a warning by the U.N. last week of a possible outbreak of political violence.}}

Government officials in the tiny central African state reacted angrily to the warning by the U.N. mission on Wednesday, saying it was baseless and had possibly been made to justify an extension of its mandate beyond its December expiry date.

The warning was linked to a political crisis over planned changes to the constitution that could allow President Pierre Nkurunziza to run for a third term. Critics say the changes could upset the country’s delicate ethnic power balance.

“A senior security adviser for the UN mission in Burundi has 48 hours to leave the country,” said Willy Nyamitwe, deputy spokesman for Burundi’s president.

“He is the one who produced a wrong report on an alleged plan to distribute weapons to youth groups affiliated to the ruling party.”

The Twitter feed of the presidency named the adviser as Paul Dobbie. The U.N. said it would engage with Burundi on the expulsion of its official.

“We regret the decision by the government of Burundi to declare a U.N. staff member persona non grata. We’ll address this matter with the government of Burundi through usual diplomatic channels,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Burundi’s political stand-off has raised the risk of another explosion in a volatile region already grappling with unrest in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic.

The country fought a 12-year civil war that ended in 2005.

{wirestory}

{{The South Sudanese army (SPLA) says it is preparing to launch a major offensive to retake Bentiu, the capital of the oil producing Unity state, calling on foreign mercenaries supporting rebel forces in the area to immediately withdraw.}}

The comments came following official confirmation that rebel fighters allied to former vice-president turned rebel leader Riek Machar had seized control of the strategic town close to the Sudanese border.

“This is a temporary victory and should not be celebrated that much by rebels. We will take it,” SPLA spokesperson Colonel Philip Aguer told reporters on Wednesday, adding that government forces remained in the area.

Aguer claims that rebels entered the town on Monday with the help of foreign mercenaries, believed to be Janjaweed, the feared Arab militias active in Darfur and western Sudan.

“They (rebels) entered the town with help of some foreign mercenaries, but it is a matter of time before these mercenaries regret allying with these rebels,” he said.

In a later press statement, Aguer called on foreign mercenaries to withdraw from the town within the next 72 hours.

Multiple government officials have accused the government of neighbouring Sudan of aiding the rebels with military hardware and air cover.

sudantribune

{{Upon conducting a Twitter search on Idi Amin recently, I was amazed to come across a fight between Britain and itself. There were raging tweets against a British Asian lady, Yasmine Alhibai-Brown, a former Ugandan Asian. }}

The tweets were vulgar, disturbingly furious and complete with Internet links to old news stories relevant to whatever accusations the persons were inferring on her.

They were in reference to a stand she took in defence of British Muslims in an article in The Independent titled, ‘British Muslims Running Out Of Friends’. She had written about state-inspired oppression of British Muslims by British police, with the tacit approval of prominent UK politicians.

Then there was an attempt at exposing the bigotry of the English Defence League (EDL) by Huffington Post UK writer Will Black in his article, ‘EDL: Marchers and Strange Irrational Rituals’.

He seemed to be condemning the English Defence League (a British nationalist group sometimes compared to neo-Nazis). He then attempts to white-wash Britain of any racism, and then finally, the writer throws the entire blame in former Ugandan president Idi Amin’s direction.

Britain, while socially fighting with itself in 2014, still refuses to acknowledge it’s political shortcomings (both historical and contemporary) and tries to find some distant individual to blame for its current social upheavals.

Let’s face it. Native Britons can be understood for feeling overwhelmed by foreign cultures taking an increasingly larger portion of the physical, social and sadly, economic environment as well. Every culture is fundamentally protective of its roots.

However, Alhibai-Brown defending the rights and freedoms of British Muslims from harassment by police and the state is a message that says: “Hey! We are British now. Suck it up.” But is that a reason for Mr Will Black to blame Amin for British upheavals? Many Asians expelled from Uganda were British as they left.

They abandoned dual nationality after being given the choice by Amin. He called himself ‘Conqueror of the British Empire’ exactly because he chased the British from Uganda. It is after the expulsion that it became clear to what extent Britain had still owned the Ugandan economy but through a proxy – Asians with British passports.

In today’s UK, the issue of Asians is an easy excuse for writers like Will Black to explain away British natives’ issues with British Asians; in part because of the 1972 mass deportation. But what is less understood by British natives, especially the many who quietly sympathise with the English Defence League, is that their feelings towards Asians was similar to what East Africans felt before and after independence in regard to Asians “taking over everything” as the EDL so angrily says.

And that is why I question the lack of any narrative on the genuine African concerns in any literature written by the British on the question of Asians in East Africa. It seems British historians and writers conveniently refuse to face the mirror to see themselves acting like little despots as they forced tough labour and stringent economic conditions on black Ugandans in the colonial and post-colonial era, leading to social tensions that culminated in the mass deportation from Uganda in a justified act of economic empowerment.

Records show that East Africa’s entire economy was handed to the Asian community by colonial Britain who, in a despicable policy of that deliberately confined the African native to remaining a third class citizen in his/her own country (with the white British at the political top, followed by the Asians on the economy, then the Africans as the workforce).

Having initially been brought to Africa by the UK under slave-like conditions, it would have been appropriate for the Asian economic migrants to maybe return home after their initial work contracts.

In all fairness, wasn’t it for Britain to either offer them sanctuary or return them to India as colonialism ended in Africa? The African peoples had remained economically impoverished following a century of policies that didn’t allow them to be part of the economy except as labourers.

From 1962, and after all three East African countries had become independent, there was immense pressure from their people to correct this economic and social system. The sometimes harsh treatment Africans suffered at the hands of many Asian employers fueled the resulting social tensions.

In one of her columns in UK’s Independent newspaper, Alibhai Brown, while recounting her childhood in Uganda, admitted that she, her family, and Ugandan Asians constantly expressed hostility and contempt for black Ugandans whose country they were living in.

And if I may put the matter in its proper historical context, all this was happening before Idi Amin. He wasn’t there in 1969 when East African leaders first decided on the expulsion. A decision that only came after Britain refused to discuss and resolve the matter through political dialogue.

Amin took over power in 1971, then did what he did best – take action. Basically, if you forget your wallet in my house after enjoying a lively dinner, the right thing for me to do would be to send you your property, right? I would, however, sympathise with Asians enduring the effects of a deportation.

However, it was genuine celebrations for Ugandans regardless of what they did with their economy after. At least they now had a fair chance to take control of their economy and learn through trial and error.

And while we are quick to say that the country’s economy declined after Asians left Uganda, we are yet to hear one critic offer a solution that would have helped native Ugandans become major economic actors in their country.

It’s as if to suggest that the British injustice where Asians deliberately held the entire economy was the only and best economic model for Uganda. That would have been an unacceptable recommendation!

In the meantime, let’s compare the plight of economic migrants who are summarily deported from the UK every day. If the numbers could be consolidated, xenophobia would be British. Her Majesty’s government first shipped Asian slaves to Africa in far worse conditions than when Idi Amin sent their grandchildren to the West.

Britain is now confronted with the very issues it so conspicuously diverted away from herself after granting African independence.

{The Author is son of former Ugandan president Idi Amin Dada.}

husseinjuruga@gamil.com

{article first published in Monitor}

{{Up to 1 000 refugees from war-torn South Sudan are fleeing to Ethiopia each day, many of them on the brink of death, the UN said on Tuesday.}}

A massive 95% of the arrivals are also women and children, added the UN, citing witnesses saying that both boys and men have been forcibly recruited by armed men or killed along the way.

Since fighting erupted in December, refugees have been “arriving at a rate of 800-1 000 per day, and they are arriving on their last legs,” Melissa Fleming, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, told reporters in Geneva.

If they had not received immediate help, “these people would be dead. They were really, really in bad shape,” she said, following a recent visit to the region.

More than 95 000 South Sudanese refugees have crossed into Ethiopia since violence erupted in the world’s youngest nation last December between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and fighters loosely allied to former vice president Riek Machar.

Nearly 200 000 more have sought refuge in Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, while more than 800 000 are displaced inside South Sudan, according to UN figures.

Some of those arriving in Ethiopia’s Gambella region had walked up to three weeks to reach the border, Fleming said, adding that most were “very hungry, [with] up to 37% malnourished and needing emergency attention.”

More than 4 000 malnourished children were receiving nutrition supplements, as were at least 3 500 lactating mothers, said Fleming.

{news24}